


Lay My Love Between the Stars (Labyrinth Oneshot)

by Aryniya



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: David Bowie Tribute, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 17:39:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13416273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aryniya/pseuds/Aryniya
Summary: 30 years after her run, Sarah Williams receives some news....





	Lay My Love Between the Stars (Labyrinth Oneshot)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to deviantArt January 11 2016

It was strange.

And wrong. So very, very wrong. It had been thirty years since Sarah had been a spoiled, bratty teenage girl. Thirty years since she had wished her beloved younger brother Toby away in a fit of childish entitlement feeling that her life was _not fair_. Thirty years since the Goblin King had answered her calls.

Even that she had deemed wholly unfair, but slowly that had receded as she ran his Labyrinth, and she had made friendships that day – night? she could never quite figure that out – that endured to this day. Though she would never want a repeat experience, Sarah had to admit that the Goblin King had taught her many lessons with his Labyrinth that had helped shape who she was today.

Confident and self assured. Cocky, too. He’d had such a presence that he just owned the space around him. He had been frightening when he had first appeared, and the second time. Really until the peach dream he had scared her whenever he had shown up, and she _always_ felt a little intimidated. I mean, she was a fifteen-year-old girl and he was a magical king. Who wouldn’t be intimidated?

Powerful and ageless, that was how she had always seen him.

And so she still could not believe that the Goblin King was dead.

Her friends had broken the news, and at her request they had taken her back to that world one more time. They didn’t take the time to wander through the labyrinth, instead appearing right outside the castle in a small courtyard.

He’d been lain out in the open air on a stone platform, not looking a day older than when she had seen him that night. His skin didn’t even look any paler, as she knew the dead looked from when she had seen a grandmother look once before. These were goblins after all, they weren’t very smart, maybe this would all be just one big mistake and he’d wake up and yell at them all for such a ridiculous idea.

But his chest didn’t move with breath. Magic, Hoggle told her. It made him look more lifelike than he was, kept the colour in his cheeks even after his blood stilled in his veins.

But it wasn’t right! How could he be dead? A curse, her friends told her. He’d been fighting it for a while, but in the end the foul thing claimed him. Sarah’s journey through the Goblin King’s labyrinth had been so a part of her life that to have Jareth, who had been such a large part of that chapter of her life, gone felt as though something of herself had left too. She had told that story to Toby throughout his life, and to his little rugrats too.

Sarah herself had never found anyone, and maybe that had something to do with Jareth too....

It seemed to her that everything should be still. But behind her the labyrinth continued to move, though she didn’t know how with its master and source dead.

“I just can’t believe you’re gone....” Sarah whispered.

She’d always thought that it was her timer that was running out. After a couple decades to cool off and reflect on her journey, Sarah had stopped thinking of Jareth as just ‘the bad guy.’ In the last couple of years, she had grown interested in learning more about him – and had been contemplating the idea of reconnecting. Of course, she was also waiting for him to come to her, her pride demanded that she not go to him begging to get to know him better. Sarah knew, through her friends, that Jareth hadn’t forgotten her either, but similarly had not yet come to make his offer in a similar show of pride. But Sarah had always thought that it was _she_ who was the time limit. That it was _her_ mortality that dictated how long they had before it was too late. And just when she had started to try to learn about him, her chance was dashed away.

He’d been so talented, too. His magic, his music....

And as she thought of it, melodies, songs drifted on the wind.

_It’s only forever...  
Not long at all...._

_Dance, magic dance_  
Dance, magic dance  
Put that baby spell on me

_As the pain sweeps through, makes no sense for you_  
Every thrill has gone, wasn’t too much fun at all  
But I’ll be there for you-o-o  
As the world falls down....

_Live without your sun light_  
Love without your heartbeat  
I, I-I can’t live within you....

Tears in her eyes, Sarah had approached the fallen king and leaned over him. “You were wrong about one thing, Jareth,” she said, finally understanding something. “You _can_ live within me. You do live within me, in all of us.”

Sarah then gave a first, and final, farewell kiss to the cold Goblin King, and felt a small rush of magic fill her.

“Jareth....” she breathed.

“ _Yes, precious....”_

_~o~_

_Within the rocks and stone of the Labyrinth, within his music, within those left behind, he lived and can never truly die....._

**Author's Note:**

> In Memory of David Bowie, who brought the Goblin King, Jareth, to life.
> 
> I do not own Labyrinth, that would be the Jim Henson company. Nor do I own the charaters within said work.  
> Jareth, the Goblin King, will forever belong to David Bowie, whom all his fans, of his music, his acting - including Labyrinth and others - shall miss.


End file.
